ITIL 4 – a “crystal ball” for evaluating technology and value

Royce Dsouza began his ITIL® journey in 2011, becoming an ITIL Expert in 2015. His ITSM career has included setting up a service management office at two Fortune 500 companies and helping to align IT with end-to-end service delivery.

He has replicated this success at his previous company, one of the largest insurance providers in the USA, and has recently certified in ITIL 4:

I’m an ITIL Expert, so what made me jump into doing the new ITIL 4 Foundation certification?

When the coming of ITIL 4 was announced it got my attention but I was sceptical: I wondered what more could be done with ITIL after v3; would this be just a re-hash

I’m impressed with the Service Value System (SVS) approach, the way it integrates ITIL with other methodologies and how it focuses on creating end-to-end services (the SVS includes the ITIL guiding principles, governance, the service value chain, practices plus everything subject to continual improvement). And, moreover, you can walk out of the ITIL 4 certification and adopt and adapt the guidance.

Previously, even as an ITIL Expert, it was difficult to integrate processes across an entire organization. Now, ITIL 4 maps an entire value system that you can take “out of the box” to the organization as a whole to create end-to-end value.

Tackling technology and other frameworks

I’ve always been concerned to see organizations implementing new technologies just for the sake of it, and without the right processes.

I think ITIL 4 provides the right approach to that, highlighting the importance of roles and documentation.

Also, it addresses the friction that may exist between different teams using various methods and frameworks, such as DevOps: now an entire organization can be on the same page with end-to-end services and adopt different frameworks together to create that concept. Bringing together people, suppliers, technology and practices makes ITIL 4 a true business framework that can be used anywhere in an organization – not just for IT infrastructure as was the perception in the past.

In fact, I think it picks the best of everything and puts them together seamlessly to create value in an organization.

Gaining value and reducing waste

Technology is evolving exponentially right now, with AI, augmented reality, etc. Practically every month there’s either a new application or technology.

The risk is that organizations – rather than gaining value and reducing waste – are adding to their “technical debt” without realizing value.

However, what ITIL 4 presents through the SVS is a meaningful approach with the pace of technology change today. It means you can stop, apply the four dimensions of service management and develop an end-to-end system to see whether a particular technology will bring value and so inform decisions on whether to invest further or not.

I like to think of ITIL 4 as a crystal ball you can use to evaluate technology’s impact on bottom line revenue and make the right choices for an organization without creating more waste.

And when I look back on my service management career and realize all the mistakes I’d made and those I’d seen, all of that is answered in ITIL 4.